News

December 2025

• 

  KAUST researchers define the emerging field of high-performance statistical computing (HPSC)

  4 min read · Sun, Dec 14 2025

  News

  exascale GPU HPC mixed-precision computing Statistical computing

  KAUST researchers outline a new discipline for statistical computing at supercomputing scale.

October 2025

• 

  KAUST alumna Dr. Rabab Alomairy wins prestigious IEEE CS TCHPC Early Career Researchers Award

  3 min read · Wed, Oct 22 2025

  Awards News

  HPC

  KAUST alumna and Ibn Rushd Postdoctoral Fellow Dr. Rabab Alomairy received the IEEE CS Early Career Researchers Award in HPC, becoming the first Middle Eastern and one of the youngest recipients professionally to earn this distinction in the award’s decade-long history.

July 2025

• 

  KAUST startup Saee delivers logistics innovation, reflecting University’s entrepreneurial impact

  1 min read · Thu, Jul 24 2025

  News Clip News

  From KAUST to acquisition by Estimkan, Saee’s journey underscores research-based entrepreneurship advancing national innovation.

November 2024

• 

  KAUST wins the “Nobel” of high-performance computing for climate modeling

  1 min read · Fri, Nov 22 2024

  News Clip News

  HPC climate projections extreme computing computational simulations uncertainty quantification

  KAUST has been awarded the “Nobel" prize of high-performance computing—the ACM Gordon Bell Prize for Climate Modelling—in partnership with the NSF National Center for Atmospheric Research, U.S. and other partner institutions.

August 2024

• 

  KAUST researchers earn dual Bell finalist selections

  1 min read · Thu, Aug 1 2024

  News Clip Awards

  KAUST has achieved a historic double finalist selection for the ACM Gordon Bell Prize and the ACM Gordon Bell Prize for Climate Modeling, recognizing two innovative research projects in collaboration with global partners that demonstrate the power of interdisciplinary teamwork in high-performance computing and climate science.

July 2024

• 

  KAUST team selected as ACM Gordon Bell Prize for Climate Modelling finalists

  4 min read · Tue, Jul 23 2024

  News

  A new exascale climate emulator marks a significant advancement as the first to generate, display and evaluate hourly emulations. This breakthrough secured an interdisciplinary research team from KAUST, working alongside the NSF National Center for Atmospheric Research in the U.S. and other partner institutions, a spot as a finalist for the prestigious Gordon Bell Prize in Climate Modelling.

February 2024

• 

  KAUST’s Shaheen III confirmed as the Middle East’s most powerful supercomputer

  1 min read · Wed, Feb 7 2024

  News

  TOP500, the definitive voice of supercomputer statistics, has today confirmed King Abdullah University of Science and Technology (KAUST) operates the Middle East’s most powerful supercomputer, Shaheen III, with key details about its capabilities revealed at SC23, the international conference for supercomputing. Shaheen III is also ranked 20th in the world rankings. Built by the world’s leading supercomputer provider, Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE), Shaheen III is about six times faster than KAUST’s existing Shaheen II system, with its processing power exceeds that of 500,000 latest

November 2023

• 

  High Performance Computing for Environmental and Earth Sciences: Birds of a Feather at SC23!

  1 min read · Sat, Nov 4 2023

  News

  Organizers: 1. Sameh Abdulah, Research Scientist, Extreme Computing Research Center (ECRC), King Abdullah University of Science and Technology (KAUST). 2. Didem Unat, Associate Professor, Koç University, Turkey. 3. Ebru Bozda, Assistant Professor, Geophysics Department, the Colorado School of Mines, US. 4. Auroop Ganguly COE Distinguished Professor, Civil and Environmental Engineering, Northeastern University. 5. Andreas Herten, Researcher, Jülich Supercomputing Centre, Jülich, Germany Abstract: The growth of climate and earth data brings a pressing need to enhance techniques for its handling

October 2023

• 

  Mixed Feelings About Mixed Precisions: Birds of a Feather at SC23!

  1 min read · Tue, Oct 24 2023

  News

  Mixed Precisions HPC GPU Computing

  Abstract What if we have been oversolving in computational science and engineering for decades? Are low precision arithmetic formats only for AI workloads? How can HPC applications exploit mixed-precision hardware features? This BoF invites the HPC community at large interested in applying mixed precisions into their workflows and discussing the impact on time-to-solution, memory footprint, data motion, and energy consumption. Experts from scientific applications/software libraries/hardware architectures will briefly provide the context on this trendy topic, share their own perspectives, and

May 2023

• 

  Compress to impress with AI hardware

  1 min read · Thu, May 18 2023

  News

  Scientists can speed up simulations of complex systems by using compression algorithms running on AI hardware.

October 2022

• 

  A predictive eye on the prize

  3 min read · Sun, Oct 16 2022

  Awards News

  HPC weather forecast climate science

  Climate prediction models have had a mathematical makeover that has won attention from a computer science award.

September 2022

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  Steering Customized AI Architectures for HPC Scientific Workloads: A Bird of Feather at SC22!

  1 min read · Thu, Sep 15 2022

  News

  machine learning HPC numerical linear algebra artificial intelligence

  Abstract: We explore the possibilities of a hybrid system capable of solving both HPC and AI scientific problems. Such a hybrid architecture combines the synergism between classical HPC platforms and dedicated AI chip systems, which is important due to the computational challenges brought to the fore by massively parallel Exascale systems. We discuss the system functionality, the algorithmic software adaptations, and performance considerations. We present efforts in supporting AI/ML applications in addition to seismic imaging, climate/weather prediction, and computational astronomy on hybrid
• 

  Mixed Feelings About Mixed Precisions: Birds of a Feather at SC22!

  1 min read · Tue, Sep 13 2022

  News

  Mixed Precisions HPC GPU Computing

  Abstract: Come and share your experiences with the state-of-the-art of mixed-precision techniques! By wisely trading off accuracy, we can mitigate data movement overheads and increase performance of applications, including real-time adaptive optics simulations on ground-based telescopes and genome-wide association study for agricultural genomics. No free lunch, however: these optimizations require support from the software/hardware ecosystem and strong numerical validation. For instance, the tile Cholesky factorization is a fundamental matrix algorithm in solving covariance problems that
• 

  Designing Tomorrow's Algorithms on Today's Architectures: a Case Study with Stencil Computations Using AMD 3D V-Cache™ Technology

  1 min read · Mon, Sep 12 2022

  News

  HPC Performance optimization seismic imaging

  Regular stencil computations constitute the main core kernel in many temporally explicit approaches for structured grid finite-difference, finite-volume, and finite-element discretizations of partial differential equation conservation laws. For various blocking dimensions, the Spatial Blocking (SB) approach enables data reuse within multiple cache levels. However, the straightforward generalization of SB to manycore architectures, with each core owning an exclusive share of cache may leave performance on the table. The next two figures show the typical 25-point 3D star stencil used in seismic

August 2022

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  A model for millions of locations

  1 min read · Tue, Aug 23 2022

  News

  climate change Environmental Statistics modeling statistics

  CEMSE statisticians developed a framework which enables modeling of a range of meteorological and environmental datasets from up to 2 million locations globally.

May 2022

• 

  Code of collaboration

  1 min read · Thu, May 26 2022

  News

  seismic imaging big data

  David Keyes's and Matteo Ravasi's cross-disciplinary project results in improved efficiency for seismic processing, with promising applications for the energy industry.

February 2022

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  ECRC contributions to SIAM PP22

  1 min read · Tue, Feb 1 2022

  News

  As in previous SIAM conferences on Parallel Processing (PP) and Computational Science and Engineering (CSE), ECRC members and their collaborators will have a strong presence at SIAM PP22, nominally in Seattle, Washington USA, but held virtually due to the pandemic.

July 2021

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  Mixing precision for model acceleration

  1 min read · Mon, Jul 26 2021

  News

  extreme computing supercomputing big data statistics

  A mixed-precision approach for modeling large geospatial datasets can achieve benchmark accuracy with a fraction of the computational run time.

May 2021

• 

  Our Masked Guest Speakers Series

  1 min read · Sun, May 2 2021

  News

  Masked Guest Speakers High Performance Computing numerical linear algebra Performance optimization

  Every week, we have a masked guest speaker opening our HiCMA weekly meeting by giving a remote talk on broad topics related to numerical linear algebra, high performance computing, programming models and performance optimizations. Our motto is fun and science!

March 2021

• 

  The Arab World Prepares the Exascale Workforce

  1 min read · Tue, Mar 23 2021

  News

  High Performance Computing computational science and engineering

  The April 2021 Communications of the ACM special section on computing in the Arab world features an article by ECRC Director and KAUST founding dean David Keyes on preparing the exascale workforce. Keyes muses on the lure of hands-on opportunities to resolve today’s application-architecture tension with innovative algorithms for recruiting students, and he follows the placement of a dozen recent ECRC doctoral students from the MENA region in the US exascale computing project and Saudi industry. For them, “graduation” means an upgrade to a more powerful computer :-). Several have also seen

February 2021

• 

  ECRC contributions to SIAM CSE21

  1 min read · Sat, Feb 27 2021

  News

  research conference HPC computational science and engineering

  ECRC @ SIAM CSE21! Follow us @KAUST_ECRC As in previous SIAM conferences on Parallel Processing (PP) and Computational Science and Engineering (CSE), ECRC members and their collaborators will have a strong presence at SIAM CSE21, nominally in Fort Worth, Texas, but held virtually due to the pandemic. ************************************************** SIAM CSE21 will run virtually with live sessions. ************************************************** Registration to SIAM CSE is required to gain access to the online platform and attend live sessions. Once registered, please use your personal

November 2020

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  KAUST startup aims to disrupt last-mile delivery

  1 min read · Mon, Nov 30 2020

  News

  As e-commerce continues to spike worldwide, especially with the pandemic, the number of parcels delivered each day has dramatically increased. Customer expectations for speedy fulfillment have also been rising, however, leaving companies to grapple with multiple, last-mile delivery challenges.
• 

  Keep the data coming

  1 min read · Mon, Nov 9 2020

  News

  big data extreme computing applied mathematics computational science

  A continuous data supply ensures data-intensive simulations can run at maximum speed.

September 2020

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  KAUST Ph.D. graduate wins best paper award at prestigious Euro-Par 2020

  1 min read · Sun, Sep 20 2020

  News Spotlight

  euro-par conference

  KAUST Ph.D. graduate, Dr Tariq Alturkestani, won the best paper award at the prestigious annual international conference Euro-Par 2020. The paper was selected out of 158 papers that were submitted by candidates from all over the world.
• 

  H2Opus: a Performance-Oriented Library for Hierarchical Matrices

  1 min read · Wed, Sep 16 2020

  News

  GPU Computing High Performance Computing numerical linear algebra

  H2Opus: a Performance-Oriented Library for Hierarchical Matrices Download at https://github.com/ecrc/h2opus. Experience our latest HPC software release that implements H 2-Matrix operations on shared-memory systems, possibly equipped with GPU hardware accelerators. The prime target applications for H2Opus are PDE-constrained optimizations. The features of H2Opus include: Generation of matrix structure from a point set and admissibility condition, Construction of a hierarchical matrix given a kernel function, Matrix-vector and matrix-multiple-vector multiplication, Basis orthogonalization
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  Turning your desktop to a Supercomputer with ExaGeoStatR

  1 min read · Mon, Sep 7 2020

  News

  Maximum Likelihood HPC Environmental Statistics

  Turning your desktop to a Supercomputer with ExaGeoStatR Download at https://github.com/ecrc/exageostatR. Remember the old times where you had to leave your R simulations running for the whole night on your desktop due to a large climate/weather dataset? ExaGeoStatR combines the user productivity of R with high performance computing linear algebra software libraries to deliver supercomputing-style environment right below your desk. ExaGeoStatR enables computing the maximum likelihood using large environmental datasets on R, while extracting performance from the underlying hardware resources

August 2020

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  Tariq receives his best paper award at EuroPar'2020

  1 min read · Thu, Aug 27 2020

  News

  High Performance Computing GPU Computing burst buffer scientific computing Parallel and Distributed Computing

  Maximizing I/O Bandwidth for Out-of-Core HPC Applications on Heterogeneous Large-Scale Systems Best Paper Presentation by Tariq Alturkestani PhD Student, Computer Science, KAUST Thursday, Aug 27, 3:30pm - 4:00pm (AST) https://zoom.us/j/99947879910 Tariq will present his best paper at EuroPar'2020 at the virtual EuroPar'2020 conference in Warsaw, Poland. The reverse time migration (RTM) method is critical in seismic imaging for oil and gas industries. He demonstrates the effectiveness of his Multilayer Buffer System (MLBS) framework on Shaheen-2 (using 2048 compute nodes) and Summit

July 2020

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  Keyes and colleagues take part in historic ISC

  1 min read · Tue, Jul 14 2020

  News

  International Supercomputing Conference

  KAUST Professor David Keyes, director of the KAUST Extreme Computing Research Center (ECRC) and professor of applied mathematics and computational science, chaired this year's International Supercomputing Conference (ISC). The ISC, which takes place in Frankfurt, Germany every June, is where the world's supercomputers are re-ranked for computational power, power efficiency, and performance on various scientific benchmarks.
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  Prof. Keyes opening virtually the ISC event

  1 min read · Tue, Jul 14 2020

  News

  International Supercomputing Conference research conference

  Prof. Keyes and team successfully run virtually the ISC event: catch up on the opening session below! Read the full article here.
• 

  PhD Defense of Tariq AlTurkestani

  1 min read · Sun, Jul 5 2020

  News

  PhD Defense HPC scientific computing parallel simulations Parallel and Distributed Computing

  Maximizing I/O Bandwidth for Out-of-Core HPC Applications on Heterogeneous Large-Scale Systems PhD Dissertation Defense by Tariq Alturkestani PhD Student, Computer Science Thursday, July 9, 16:00 - 17:00, https://kaust.zoom.us/j/94054511362 Contact Person: Tariq Alturkestani The execution rate of floating-point operations has typically increased by an order of magnitude every four years during the last 30 years of modern comput ing. This exponential growth in terms of computational power has benefited from the hardware technology scaling. However, memory and storage systems have not maintained

June 2020

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  KAUST scientists win prestigious Gauss Award for supercomputing excellence

  1 min read · Fri, Jun 26 2020

  News

  HPC supercomputing numerical linear algebra parallel computing

  KAUST Ph.D. graduate Dr. Noha Al-Harthi and doctoral student Rabab Alomairy, have won the German Gauss Center for Supercomputing (GCS) Award for original research that best advances high-performance computing. This makes KAUST the first Middle Eastern institution to receive this prestigious award.

May 2020

• 

  Shaheen II open to serve COVID-19 research around the Kingdom

  1 min read · Sun, May 10 2020

  News

  supercomputing

  The COVID-19 pandemic has imposed challenges across the globe that need to be solved using scientific discovery and innovation. In line with that, the KAUST Supercomputing Core Laboratory (KSL) has opened a call for proposals that require its supercomputer Shaheen II, as well as other cluster computing resources, to support research projects.

February 2020

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  Pop stats for big geodata

  1 min read · Mon, Feb 24 2020

  News

  climate change statistics

  A universal high-performance computing interface allows popular statistical tools to run efficiently on large geospatial datasets.

May 2019

• 

  KAUST Professor David Keyes to chair International Supercomputing Conference 2020

  1 min read · Mon, May 20 2019

  Spotlight News

  supercomputing conference

  David Keyes, KAUST professor of applied mathematics and computational science; director of the University's Extreme Computing Research Center; and senior associate to the President of KAUST, will chair the International Supercomputing Conference (ISC) 2020. He will be the first program chair from a Middle Eastern institution, as announced by ISC 2020.
• 

  Cutting datasets down to size

  1 min read · Thu, May 16 2019

  News

  applied mathematics computational science statistics environment

  A powerful statistical tool could significantly reduce the burden of analyzing very large datasets.

October 2018

• 

  KAUST gets ready for SC18

  1 min read · Mon, Oct 8 2018

  News

  supercomputing High Performance Computing

  For the past 10 years, KAUST has made a strong presence at the International Conference for High Performance Computing, Networking, Storage, and Analysis (SC) that takes place in different cities around the U.S. every year. 2018 will mark a special year for KAUST at SC, which will take place in Dallas, Texas, in November, with around 13,000 supercomputing professionals in attendance. The University will have an engaging presence on the exhibition floor and in the seminars, and the technical program of SC18 will be chaired by the Director of the KAUST Extreme Computing Research Center (ECRC)

July 2018

• 

  Superior seismic imaging for better drilling

  1 min read · Sun, Jul 8 2018

  News

  seismic imaging fossil fuels extreme computing data analysis

  Software could transform underground imaging of fossil fuel reserves by providing unprecedented detail in record time.

February 2018

• 

  ECRC brings astronomy back home

  1 min read · Tue, Feb 20 2018

  News

  optical telescope GPU Computing parallel algorithms

  Astronomy research excellence is coming back home to the Middle East, where it took its first steps around 1200 BC. Custome new software developed by the KAUST Extreme Computing Research Center (ECRC) was released at the end of 2017. Named MOAO - Multiple Object Adaptive Optics – the software will contribute to the activities of the world's largest future optical telescope to be deployed in Chile in 2024.
• 

  Pulling rank on spatial statistics

  1 min read · Sun, Feb 18 2018

  News

  High Performance Computing statistics

  A technique that uses the power of computing could solve statistical problems cheaper and faster than current methods.

March 2017

• 

  Signaling success for 5th gen communications

  1 min read · Sat, Mar 4 2017

  News

  applied mathematics mobile

  An efficient wireless signal optimization scheme achieves peak performance for next-generation mobile communications.

January 2017

• 

  New cost-effective GPUs solver redesigns the computational game

  1 min read · Thu, Jan 12 2017

  News

  exascale High Performance Computing parallel computing

  Prof. David Keyes and his team proposed a GPUs light architecture to solve systems of multiple equations involving a large amount of data. Broadly used in computer gaming, mobile, and PC graphics - GPUs allow customizing an effective result-driven support to create a computational framework for increasing the number of processors while reducing the memory required to temporarily store the data.
• 

  Taking graphics cards beyond gaming

  1 min read · Mon, Jan 9 2017

  News

  graphic card computing applied mathematics computational science

  A highly efficient mathematical solver designed to run on graphics processors gives scientists and engineers a powerful new tool for a common computational problem.

April 2015

• 

  Taking computing to the next level

  1 min read · Sat, Apr 25 2015

  News

  supercomputing data wrap applied mathematics computational science

  KAUST’s new supercomputer will enable ground-breaking scientific modeling and analysis in Saudi Arabia and worldwide.